Second Helpings
The birds assemble in 45th Battalion of the 14th Brigade, toting a company of bitter sparrows with a streak of bad luck running through their plumage. The Crow posts on the church cupola, coughs out orders with a crucifix. His feathers are slick and black like oil. Oil, oil, he oils the mechanism that does his bidding, rusty branches of a broken weathervane. Fluorescent fly trap. The metallic buzz that slices through silence, through innocence, through Septemberâ¦ Octoberâ¦ Novemberâ¦ Indefinitely. But you can't take the Enemy sitting on a shock wire, nor can you predict a storm with your head in the dish of Ignorance, eating it up like sweet honey, so that it sticks to your throat like sweet honey, and you're left licking your fingers with delicious disgust and listening to the birds play morning taps.

These are easy times
for infidels
for nothing is so simple
as a faithless follower,
setting standards by stripes
and worth by stars
and loyalties by borderlines and
shades of skin.
When I cock my gun
do you hear angels?
When I turn the pages of a loaded magazine
are you reborn?
Into the hymns and headlines of popular culture
boasting our best lines
and freshest gun powder.

It explodes into melodies
like the cry of the infantry
placed in play pens,
penning place markers on foreign walls,
pinching pictures of husbandswivesgirlfriendsboyfriends
between loyal thumbs.

They form lines like playground roll call
where first is worst
second is best
and third is the one
with the bullet in his chest.
And no cutsies,
you'll get yours too
when they take your motherfatherbrothersistercousinfriend
your faith will find you then.